


Long Live the Queen

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Transfer of power or none, the Windswept Questant is a queen until the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Live the Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vociferocity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vociferocity/gifts).



Ten seconds. WQ’s only reward for nearly four-hundred years of unwavering focus and self-denial lasts for ten seconds. She thinks she could bear it if only her death went as quickly, but stabbing her through the lungs when he could just take her head is hardly the cruelest thing Jack has ever done. She will bear it anyhow. She has no other option. There is no breath left in her body for screaming.

When she hits the floor, her first impulse is to crawl to her husband and curl up beside him, but she doesn’t have the strength for that. She doesn’t even have the strength to cough up the blood oozing thick in her throat. And Jack, it seems, has no intention of letting her die even this close to the body of the man she was made to love. He picks her up and drags her out to watch him destroy everything else for which she has worked and suffered.

She thinks she is completely numb when she sees the stalwart little Dersite’s head come off and feels nothing, but when PM lunges for Jack she suddenly finds herself struggling futilely to shout for her to stop. PM is impulsive and emotional and everything that a Prospitian queen cannot afford to be, and it will get her killed.

Only, it doesn’t. Jack vanishes before she can reach him. PM looks at AR, shudders and quickly looks away, then turns and approaches WQ.

“Hold on, your Majesty,” she says as she kneels down beside her. WQ doubts she would correct her even if she could. PM is shaking with barely suppressed rage as she cuts off pieces of her own rags to make bandages, but her hands work steadily. “It’s not right!” she blurts out without pausing in what she’s doing. “It’s not fair! Not after everything we’ve done! It can’t all have been for nothing, it just can’t have been!”

There’s a feeling of sudden pressure in WQ’s chest when PM presses cloth down over the hole, and she finds herself able to draw a few shallow breaths. “Don’t,” she gasps. “Too late.”

“I don’t care,” PM tells her, and there’s an authority in her voice entirely befitting of the role that’s been thrust upon her even if the sentiment is not.

“No. WV. _Ring_.” It’s the last breath she has for words, and she uses it as she has used every breath before it: refusing her own comfort for the sake of the greater task at hand.

PM’s back straightens and stiffens. She reaches down to WQ’s hand and takes it in hers, just for a moment. “I’ll be back. I promise I won’t let you die alone. We’ve all been alone for too long.” Then she rises to her feet and runs like she’s racing the world’s end.

WQ tries to wait for her — not for her own sake, but for PM’s. Someday, the girl will have to learn not to make promises she cannot keep. Someday soon, she will understand that loneliness is an inescapable part of what queens are and what they must do. Even so, WQ struggles against the darkness invading her mind. It is a losing battle, but she fights it until the end.


End file.
